#StayPositive Brain-Boosting 30-Day Challenge

On April 1st we started our 30-Day Brain-Boosting Challenge to help get people motivated to stay positive, make change and develop their agency to get cool shit done for a positive, regenerative and sustainable future.

You get daily dosses of content and you can still sign up here, but we also thought why not share some highlights from the program with you today to help you activate your agency and #staypositive! In today’s journal, we have included some content from three of the daily sessions, which are delivered in “Watch” “Read” and “Do” segments each day.

DAY 1: AGENCY

Let's look at how to activate agency for ourselves and in others by working on identifying and expanding your sphere of influence. The first part of the Design Systems Change Handbook goes into this in great detail, and here is the summary version. 

Agency is the capacity of an individual to take action in a particular environment. For most of our lives, we are taught that we don't have impacts on the world around us. An agentized individual, however, is aware of their influence and the dynamic relationship they have with the world. 

Every action we take or don't take has an impact: the things we buy, the conversations we have, the air we breathe - it all has an impactful relationship with the world.

Your agency is about your capacity to act independently and make free choices. These choices are affected by your worldview and the way you see yourself, formed through your experiences with the world, society in general and the things you chose to learn. 

Social structures and circumstances have a huge impact on one's agency, and the life you are born into can increase or decrease your “given” agency. Many of these social structures and circumstances are out of our control, yet they have a huge impact on our agency. The most critical thing is how you interpret your experiences and what they do to your sense of self. Thankfully, we are also seeing seismic shifts in access to the resources that support individual agency development.

Design science pioneer Buckminster Fuller said, ”Call me trimtab,” (it’s even engraved on his tombstone) because he, like many other changemakers, identified that the smallest part of the system can make the biggest change. A trimtab is a tiny part inside the rudder at the back of a large ship. When the ship’s steering wheel is moved, the tiny trimtab shifts in direction and (re)directs the whole trajectory of the ship. Often, the smallest part of the system can move the biggest parts.

This analogy is important to consider when thinking about your personal sphere of influence and the agency that you have to make change in the world around you. Many people fall into the trap of deflecting responsibility to others or blaming the large obvious parts of the system, deferring change to elements that they have little control over. But it’s often the small inconspicuous parts that have the most power and influence over the system dynamics to affect change. Our job is to identify them and unlock their potential. 

Integrity (especially as we deploy what agency we have and develop) is the backbone of our sense of self. It is about having a moral stand that you can refer to and being “whole” or complete when you come to making decisions. As author C.S. Lewis says, integrity is "doing the right thing, even when no one is looking.”  

Expanding Your Personal Agency 

Developing agency goes hand in hand with developing a firm adherence to a set of values, honesty to yourself and the world around you. Fundamentally, it’s a code of conduct or moral compass that you use to set up your practice and govern your decisions as you grow your sphere of influence in the world. 

Individuals who have a strong sense of personal agency believe events are a result of the actions they take, and they praise or blame themselves and their own abilities. Those who see agency external to themselves will praise or blame external factors. For example, someone with a strong sense of personal agency will credit their study habits for passing a test, whereas someone else may attribute their success to the teacher or the exam. Likewise, if they don’t do well, the person with the stronger sense of personal agency will blame themselves rather than the teacher or exam (Carlson, 2007)*.  

*Carlson, N.R., Buskist, W., Heth, C.D. and Schmaltz, R., 2007. Psychology: the science of behaviour-4th Canadian ed.

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DAY 2: REFLEXIVITY AND REFLECTION 

Reflexivity is all about mental flexibility, which entails continuing to learn at the edge of comfort when it comes to understanding things, advancing your ability to think in and around something, and not just seeing things from only one perspective, but honing the ability to think from multiple different vantage points. 

You will benefit immensely from developing a super strong reflective thinking muscle that supports you in your ability to gain deeper insights into the way the world works, how you interact with it and how this can develop your agency. 

Self-reflection, divergent and non-linear thinking skills, hypercomplexity and reflexivity all involve asking a significant number of questions and fostering a deep sense of curiosity about the world around you. It is about assuming you don't know something until you know enough to know it. Whereas many people seek to avoid things they don't know, instead we relish in the fact that there are always new things to uncover. 

This is a lifelong practice, something that you develop over time, with consideration and connection to your inner self. Where reflection is the act of thinking back on something and gaining insights from the vantage point of hindsight, reflexivity is about a more dynamic, intimate and developed self-awareness, fostering the ability to think in and through something, rather than just look back on it after the fact. 

Reflexivity thus is about the circular relationships between cause and effect, especially when it comes to human belief structures. A reflexive relationship goes both ways, where we see cause and the effect both affecting each other in a dynamic relationship, rather than just seeing one part of the connection. You develop the ability to see what happens when an action is taken, and likewise you can see what would happen if you didn't take an action. 

Through this, we can see ourselves as part of the systems we are interacting with, instead of seeing ourselves apart from them. While reflection helps us learn from the past, reflexivity gives us tools to extract information from the moment we are in and the ones we will enter into. 

A high level of social reflexivity, for example, is defined by an individual having the ability to shape their own norms, tastes, politics and desires, and it is very much connected to the ability for one to identify their own agency and exert actions that connect to the advancement of one's influence on the world.

Reflection is a very useful daily practice tool that enables us each to see inside and gain insights into ourselves, which in turn enables us to grow personally and professionally. But to reflect on the world is equally as important. Tools like observing and recognizing bias, alongside learning to love problems and shifting mindsets, are all part of the tool set of positive, practical, proactive changemaking (and all of which we will explore over the coming days). 

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DAY 3: SPHERE OF INFLUENCE

Your sphere of influence is the space in which you have the ability and power to change things. 

The idea that one person can save the world is not very agentizing, as it either encourages people to deflect responsibility for change to that one magical “other,” or it puts an immense burden onto the shoulders of those who want to be involved in the changes and expects them to influence the entire world. What instead is so much more useful is for us all to understand, no matter who we are, that each and every single one of us change the world every day through our actions. We all exert influence over the worlds we inhabit.

The things we buy, the food we eat, the jobs we do, the way we move around — these all have profound impacts on the natural environment, the economy, and society. Unfortunately, many of our actions result in flow-on effects throughout the system, which are often invisible to us and result in some form of unsustainability. The perpetuation of this blind participation in changemaking is one of the major issues we face. That's why there are movements to change the way we design, produce and consume everyday things so that their impact via our actions is lower. The movement toward a circular and regenerative economy is well underway, and this challenge pack you are engaging with is designed to help you discover your agency and role in this bigger picture. 

The decision to be involved in change, be it in your personal or professional life, starts by discovering how to activate your personal agency (which we have been looking at), identifying the sphere of influence you uniquely hold (today's topic) and then adopting the tools that will enable you to expand that influence and activate your creative potential to engage with change (content covered over the next 3.5 weeks!).  

Your sphere of influence is the space that you hold court over, combined with the knowledge you have, the people and communities you engage with, and the integrity you hold (which often translates to how much others value your knowledge, etc). Your sphere of influence is also the scope of the potential impact that your actions may or may not result in. 

When we are kids, our sphere of influence is small, often restricted to our families, but it's potent because we often wield quite a bit of influence over them at this stage in our lives. Then, as a young adult, we expand to have a more significant influence on our friends and peer group (as they do on us), and this slowly grows out to colleagues and partners and then our own kids and others as time and experiences and life advancements give us more agency and influence over the space we hold. The influence that we can each have is based on the amount of agency we cultivate and the integrity we build in ourselves over time. I will note here there are many structural forces that can restrict some and enable others. This is an entirely different topic, and we will discuss aspects of it later on — I just didn't want it to go unsaid that the lack of equity when it comes to certain resources does greatly restrict some people. 

That being said, there is a reality that every agent in a system impacts it. Every action we each take or don't take will have an impact (good, bad and all the options in between) —  the things we buy, the conversations we have, the air we breathe, the things we post online — these all have an impactful relationship on us and on the world, as everything is interconnected. The domino, butterfly or flow-on effect reminds us that our actions have impacts. Both “bad” and “good,” intentional and unintentional, everything we do in this big complex system has an effect on something else, and if you identify your agency and sphere of influence, then you are in a unique position to have an intentionally positive impact with the intent to change the systems around you, as you will be enabled to see yourself within the systems and work within its dynamics. 

An agentized individual is aware that they have influence and that their dynamic relationships with the world they inhabit are influencing them, too. 

By working on identifying and expanding your agency and sphere of influence over time, no matter how few resources you have, you can find creative ways to leverage this into new ways of effecting positive change. The world has seen this time and time again — the smallest part of the system can, if positioned right, effect the most significant change. 

That's why it's so exciting to see that we are all in the middle of a great movement toward change. There are many people the world over redefining their lives so that they, too, can participate in the world with more purpose and contribute back to the planet and their communities. And I assume you are one of them too!

A sphere of influence does not just tally up the number of people you know or the social network you have, although these are important in some cases of social influence (and important for personal connections). The key thing to influence is the integrity you hold and the trust that others have in your ability to influence within the space you hold. 

FURTHER READING

• A quick summary of identifying who's in you your sphere of influence here

• Read about the concept of Locus of Control here 

• Read this paper on sphere of influence and ecological problems 

#StayPositive: Social Distancing is Doing Some Good for the Planet!

How’s everyone holding up out there? No doubt with less physical things to do, and all that time saved from not being able to travel anywhere (not even to work!), you’ve likely seen the reports coming out about how social distancing is impacting the world in some surprisingly positive ways. From satellite images showing pollution drops over China and Italy, to clearer water running through the Venice Canal (and dolphins swimming through, albeit wishful thinking), it’s easy to see that limiting our non-essential activities, adopting work-from-home habits, and staying home more is giving our shared home, planet Earth, a much-needed breather as well.

So much so that in this article about plummeting emission and air pollution rates, scientists say that this year “by May, when CO2 emissions are at their peak thanks to the decomposition of leaves, the levels recorded might be the lowest since the financial crisis over a decade ago.” To be honest, we were also just fascinated by the contribution that decaying leaves have to CO2 emissions!

Additionally, NASA has released images showing the significant drop in air pollution above countries that have quarantines from COVID-19. 

Photo credit: NASA

Rebound effects

All of this has comes, though, with a secondary warning. When we do resume normal activities and people start to venture back out all over the world en mass, the carbon emissions and pollution levels could rise back up rapidly. This is not just because of the increase in transportation, but also because of a compensating attempt to ramp-up production and the desire to get back to “normal”, along with stimulus spending intended to jump-start the economy (which, as a reminder, is measured in GDP, a systems failure, because it doesn’t account for any impacts against Earth’s natural resources!). In fact, following the closure of many Chinese factories, and the recent reopening, air pollution levels are already on the rise again in China. This also matters a lot right now, as some scientists have said that air pollution could be one of the triggers for making the coronavirus worse.

Transport options matter when it comes to climate change

So, what if we start making the case now for actually continuing some of these social distancing practices that we expeditiously adopted during the past month? No, we’re not suggesting continuing on with full lock-down; freedom is vital — but what about changing the way we commute to work or run our businesses?

Individual Actions

There is an enormous opportunity for companies to widely adopt more work-from-home or flexible travel policies following this pandemic — and for individuals to advocate for it too. Take the fact that for most Americans, their transport biggest emissions impact is in their daily drive to work. Even if companies don’t go totally remote, it could make a substantial difference to implement more remote work policies and cut down on flights for meetings, conferences, trainings, etc. 

Pulling out some of the actions we’re all learning to adjust to right now may offer us some great new sustainable lifestyle and workplace options after we get through this chaos. 

Perhaps one of the most powerful amplification points here is in the illumination that yes, individual actions do collectively make a difference. If it’s every person overbuying loo roll, or baby carrots for that matter, everything we each do attributes to a bigger system wide impact. To be clear, this isn’t a scapegoat attempt to place the responsibility of creating a sustainable future solely on individuals (Leyla writes about this really well in her new handbook Design Systems Change), but more so encouragement to believe in the power of individual agency as it pertains to everyday actions. Even though it may seem that we currently have no control over the outcomes in relation to this pandemic, a quick mindset shift can showcase exactly how much control we do have over environmental impacts through the actions we do or do not take on a daily basis. This was the basis for our collaboration with the UNEP, the Anatomy of Action, in which we assessed the power lifestyle swaps across food, stuff, movement, money, and fun — all of which are being significantly disrupted by the current coronavirus outbreak.

Rethinking habits

In recent weeks and even days, you’ve likely had to rethink your daily eating habits as restaurants have shut down and many panicked shoppers cleared shelves of food. You have had to change the way you communicate with loved ones and colleagues. We’ve seen people rethink how to have fun and be social, how to care for others, with an uptick in spending time on personal hobbies and engaging in funny, creative video chats, dance parties, remote happy hours, yoga classes, and endless live streams on Instagram. Every area of our lives has experienced significant, rapid change — and we’re figuring out how to deal with that day by day. Imagine if we could do this for dealing with another existential threat — climate change! Or take this time to figure out the positive benefits that a slower world has on the systems that sustain us.

Discover more at online.unschools.co

So maybe, we can also take this rare pause from our usual busy hustle to take a long hard look at how out of alignment our current habits and global systems have been with the Earth’s systems that sustain us all. Instead of reacting to the next *insert catastrophic event here*, we can take a proactive approach to making the future work better for us all through shifts in our everyday habits.

One of the big things we always talk about at the UnSchool is that there is no failure — only opportunities to gain new knowledge that informs our actions for the future. That new knowledge is here, and it’s offering us the right set of circumstances to amplify our collective superpowers through the unstoppable force of individuals activating their agency.

What habits can you commit to continuing to help build a sustainable, regenerative future,  once “normal” life resumes?

New year, new you? On resolutions and getting over cognitive barriers to get shit done

By Leyla Acaroglu 

How many of us kick start a new year with a list of resolutions or actions, or even just ideas to make changes and finally get our shit together?

It's such a nice opportunity, the ticking over of a new year, and in this case a new decade, to take action on all the changes we have floating around at the back of our minds. Quite the job we hate —  start exercising, clean up the mess in the back room, change careers, volunteer more, start a new hobby, become a vegan, or in my case, every year for the last five years it has been, “Write the book.” Yes, it's hard to admit, but that has been my New Year's resolution for five solid years and, no, there is no completed book yet (although it's happening and I do have a new handbook coming out early this year! My 5th in 5 years, so I clearly have a complicated relationship with writing). 

Why do we all seem to have this innate desire to make changes when the year changes? It’s possibly because humans actually really enjoy a bit of healthy disruption, and the collective release of the old year allows for a really clear demarcation from the old to the new. The birth of a new year offers space for reflection and agenda setting that many other busy moments throughout the year just don’t allow us to catch. And of course, we also have all that ‘free time’ over the holidays to think and ponder and plan...

There is a growing body of research around how humans accept disruptions and adopt new behaviors at certain times in their lives. When I was researching sustainable lifestyle changes for the Anatomy of Action initiative, our collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme, I uncovered some fascinating things about social norms and personal behavior disruptions that may help you get a grip on your New Year's resolutions.

Understanding Social Norms

Social norms are the unwritten rules of what is/isn’t deemed ‘acceptable’ in any given society. They are pervasive and often implicated in influencing how we act, especially when around others. They are regulated by shaming those that don’t conform to them, and rewarding those that do.  In the context of everyday life, social norms subtly influence the decisions and choices we make each day. 

Norms, like so many other things in life, are in constant flux, so they require constant check-ins and recalibration to the evolving practice of everyday life. It would be exhausting if we had to consciously check in with all the appropriate social practices of our communities, so the human brain does a lot of this social norm calibration subconsciously by mirroring the behaviors of others around us. 

There are two prominent sociologists who have contributed to the understanding of how social norms influence us — Anthony Giddens’ Structuration Theory (1991) and Elizabeth Shove’s Social Practice Theory (2012). Both speak to the notion that change occurs when agents within a system are enabled to alter their everyday practices.

So, we don’t have our behaviors changed by others, but instead we are changed by the structural forces and interactions in our daily lives with the output of others actions. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation, meaning that it's hard to determine who is the first to make a shift in the status quo that then catches on and becomes a new social norm.

What we do know is that comparing our own practices against those of others affects what we do - or don't do.

There was a study in 2008 that demonstrated this; it looked at what would motivate people to opt into reusing their towel in a hotel. Goldstein and fellow researchers tried out a few approaches to socially normative messages to the inhabitants of a hotel room, ranging from, “The majority of guests reuse their towels,” to,  “The majority of guests in this room reuse their towels.”

The latter was way more successful in influencing people to opt to reuse their towel. Why? Because the desired behavior (of towel reuse) was seeded with a marker of social location-specific behavior to plant the normative expectation.

Basically because it said IN THIS ROOM, it made people even more aware of the social cue of reuse being specific to that space they were in, so the norm was set and people complied. The researchers go on to point out that, “A wide variety of research shows that the behavior of others in the social environment shapes individuals' interpretations of, and responses to, the situation.” 

It’s not new to us that we humans respond to cues in our environment, but how does this apply to something like a New Year's resolution? Do you think you would make a commitment to doing something differently if nobody else was doing it? I am one of those people who pride myself on being a bit different, so whilst I don’t write a list and share it with others as that would be way too obvious, I do totally make a mental mark at the turning of the new year to accomplish certain goals in that year. Knowing how social norms affect you and using these to your own motivational advantage could help you stick to your goals and make those positive changes contagious.

Overcoming Cognitive Dissonance 

The gap between what we say we will do and what we actually do is referred to as cognitive dissonance, a prevalent aspect when considering any form of behavioral economics. Research has found that simply caring about something does not mean that someone will alter behaviors towards it. Once we are made aware of a gap between what we think and what we do, we are more likely to change our opinions rather than our actions. 

The reality is that we often benefit from ignoring ourselves and behaving in other, more habitual ways, even if we are totally aligned with one value, we can still end up doing something completely opposite to it! Barkan and colleagues (2015) call this ‘ethical dissonance,’ which they say “arises from the inconsistency between the aspiration to uphold a moral self-image and the temptation to profit from unethical behavior.” When confronted with this, people often find ways to redefine their unethical behaviors as ‘non’-violations based on pre-violation justifications — like when you know that the cheap chocolate is unethically produced but you are able to rationalize purchasing it, just this once. 

Basically, we are all very good at messing with ourselves. So you need to find a way of reducing and identifying the dissonance so that you can stay on track with your goals.

Disrupting Everyday Habits 

The good news is that we can mess with ourselves and disrupt our own everyday habits by engaging with new experiences. Swapping from an existing one to a new option in an environment that reinforces the positive benefits, or when we are already experiencing dramatic changes, can all help us overcome inertia. A study by Fuji and colleagues from 2001 found that people were more likely to alter the way they commuted to work when they were forced by a temporary freeway closure to pick between a shorter train trip or larger drive. Many people who tried out the train then continued taking the train after the freeway reopened but they needed a disruption to force the new behavior to start.

This ‘habit discontinuity hypothesis’ states that habit-changing interventions are more likely to be effective when they are delivered during life changes (Verplanken and Roy, 2016), like when we move houses, go on vacation, or have a baby. Likewise, interventions that allow for habit swaps and new behaviors to be tried out are often more successful when the environment in which the habit is performed is altered (Carden & Wood 2018). So, as you start the new year, when we are more than likely on vacation mode, you have the space to start a different routine, this is the perfect time for your brain to offer you the commitment ceremony of New Year's resolutions to actions.

The challenge now is: how do you mess with your own mind enough to ensure you stick to them? 

When we developed the Anatomy of Action, our goal was to find a series of tangible, practical and achievable everyday lifestyle swaps that anyone anywhere could start to adopt to integrate sustainability into their everyday lives. We looked at many of the growing movements that are already happening, from zero waste living through to protein swapping.

There are 5 main lifestyle areas that we all engage in that we offer 3 swaps for each, and then there is also a further detailed list of actions you can take. In total, there are over 65 actions! So, if you are looking for some planet positive actions to start disrupting your life a little bit with, then head on over to the website. Check them out, and get started with your sustainable lifestyle hacks in 2020! 

References 

Gifford, R.D. and Chen, A.K., 2017. Why aren’t we taking action? Psychological barriers to climate-positive food choices. Climatic change, 140(2), pp.165-178.

McDonald, S., Oates, C.J., Thyne, M., Timmis, A.J. and Carlile, C., 2015. Flying in the face of environmental concern: why green consumers continue to fly. Journal of Marketing Management, 31(13-14), pp.1503-1528.

Barkan, R., Ayal, S. and Ariely, D., 2015. Ethical dissonance, justifications, and moral behavior. Current Opinion in Psychology, 6(DEC), pp.157-161.

Giddens, A., 1991. Structuration theory. Past, Present and Future. In: Bryant, C. and Jary, D.(eds.). Giddens’ Theory of Structuration. A Critical Appreciation. London: Routledge.

Goldstein, N.J., Cialdini, R.B. and Griskevicius, V., 2008. A room with a viewpoint: Using social norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of consumer Research, 35(3), pp.472-482. 

Shove, E., Pantzar, M. and Watson, M., 2012. The dynamics of social practice: Everyday life and how it changes. Sage.

Fujii, S., Gärling, T. and Kitamura, R., 2001. Changes in drivers’ perceptions and use of public transport during a freeway closure: Effects of temporary structural change on cooperation in a real-life social dilemma. Environment and Behavior, 33(6), pp.796-808.

Verplanken, &  Roy., 2016. Empowering interventions to promote sustainable lifestyles: Testing the habit discontinuity hypothesis in a field experiment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 45, pp.127-134.

Carden, L. and Wood, W., 2018. Habit formation and change. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 20, pp.117-122.

Lally, P. and Gardner, B., 2013. Promoting habit formation. Health Psychology Review, 7(sup1), pp.S137-S158.

Don’t be a Party Pooper! 10 Simple Hacks to Zero Party Waste

Happy (almost) New Year...and new decade! With the new year comes an exciting metaphor for change. Lots of people are excited to make resolutions to change their lives for the better, but old habits aren’t the only thing left behind when the ball drops at midnight — so is waste. Heaps and heaps of waste. Think: abandoned disposable drink bottles, micro-plastic-ridden confetti, balloons, trash, food, etc.

Why not start making positive changes before this year ends by being intentional about reducing your party waste? With a few simple swaps, you can throw a fantastic shindig that leaves your party guests feeling excited, inspired, and even activated! 

1. Start with electronic invites
   Picture it: you mail out a paper party invitation. The recipient grabs it from the mail, gets excited, rsvp’s, and puts a reminder in their phone. What do they do next? Yep — toss the invite in the trash. Save everyone time and money, and save a few trees at the same time by just sending out electronic invites.  Bonus: Include a reminder to delete the email because the Internet is physical, or even better, invite in person in the old school, face-to-face way!
   

2. Arrange a rideshare among those attending the party
   How we move is directly related to climate change and air pollution, so helping your friends get to a destination with minimal impacts is a great way to reduce waste. This could even be a fun way for your friends to make new like-minded friends on the way to the party. Bonus: Include public transit options in the invite, or if you live relatively close to each other, figure out a way for walking meetups to happen!
   

3. Prepare a delicious plant-based menu
   Food is the biggest daily impact in our lives, but you can throw an amazing party with low-impact food choices. Swap proteins for plant-based options, buy from the bulk section at your local co-op or market, and try to find produce from a local source. Bonus: Ask people to bring containers in case there are leftovers to take home with them.
   

4. Ditch disposables 
   Parties are notorious for being packed with disposables — plates, forks, straws, napkins, bottles, individual food packaging— the average party is a plastic nightmare. But the good news is that is there a reusable swap for all your party needs. There are lots of ideas here in our Post Disposable Activation Kit to help you get started. Bonus: If you’re making party gifts, see what you can give that is an experience instead of stuff, or find other unique zero-waste gifts.
   

5. DIY your decor
   Say no to disposable confetti, garlands, tinsel, paper decorations, and balloons by instead getting creative and crafty to make your own decor. Use fresh flowers or food dishes to add some color to your table, and throw some birdseed outside instead of confetti to keep the festive vibe going. Bonus: Re-purpose what you already have around the house to decorate, and make it reusable for next year
   

6. Serve up sustainable sparkling drinks 
   We all know that midnight traditionally brings clanking champagne flutes filled with bubbly goodness. But mass producing champagne of course has environmental impacts, so try to find some made with locally-grown grapes. For an alcohol-free option, have some glass bottles of sparkling juice made from locally-grown apples on hand! Bonus: If you or a friend have a seltzer maker, use that instead of buying bottles of fizzy mix.
   

7. Kindly find ways of engaging with others who may not be quite there yet when it comes to disposables and waste-filled celebrations 
   It’s highly likely that everyone at your party won’t be where you are on your sustainability journey, and some people might even think you are *gasp* weird for having actual plates and veggie-centric food. Start thinking now about how you can mitigate their questions in a kind way that might spark their curiosity, or how you might even start a conversation around this topic! Bonus: Read this article by Leyla to help you reframe how you view frustration to prep for these convos.
   

8. Be a rebel and break from the status quo by making up your own friend traditions that are more about giving back and having a positive impact. 
   New year, new you? How about “new year, new creative ways to make change” instead? Okay, maybe not as catchy and probably won’t be used in an email subject line anytime soon, but why not flip this from an individual-centric resolution to a positive impact plan that can affect your community and the world at large? Maybe even brainstorm one day a month that you and your changemaking squad rally and make positive change in your community! The sky is the limit here, so have fun thinking of creative ideas. Bonus: Exchange hugs with all your party guests at midnight. Hugs boost your endorphins, which all changemakers need!
   

9. Instead of just hangovers, send your guests home with challenges to activate their agency and get positive things done this year.
   Party favors are out, ways to level up are in. Create an easy-to-do list of things that can make an immediate positive impact in your community (Go plogging! Make a #meatlessmonday meal! Grow your own herbs! Organize a clothing swap!). Write ideas on a piece of paper (that you are reusing, of course), and send one suggestion home with everyone as a fun way to start 2020 on a positive note. Bonus: Share one of our free courses or toolkits with them.
   

10. Plan a check-in with your friends to help each other keep your creative-changemaking resolutions. 
    How many times do we go into the new year with the best of intentions, only to fall off the wagon a few months into the year after the lull of normalcy has resumed and our old habits take over? It happens to the best of us, so set up a plan for (fun!) accountability in advance. Plan a changemaking day, a positive impact meetup, or even just an e-mail exchange to see how everyone’s doing with making change. Bonus: Throw another party a few months down the road and follow steps 1-9 all over again!

What’s your anatomy of action for 2020? Tell us in our LinkedIn group for creative changemakers, and reminder: if you’re signing up for one of our certification tracks,  you can get the first month FREE (but only through January 4, so hurry) Just use the code ACTIVATING2020 when you register, and month one of any one of the tracks will be free.

Happy new year, and happy changemaking!

Anatomy of Action: On How We Move

There’s no denying that we live in the age of busy — we are continuously on the go, living amongst a chaotic frenzy of personal responsibilities, appointments, leisure activities, and whatever else is demanding our presence and attention. But the way we move has led to some devastating impacts for our home planet and for all the people who inhabit it, like soaring carbon dioxide emissions and dangerous amounts of air pollution. Reducing these emissions is, without a doubt, a matter of life or death, as at least 3.7 million people die each year as a result of outdoor air pollution, and transportation currently contributes 23% of all carbon dioxide emissions. 

We all have to get places, and the impact we each have on climate change and air pollution is directly attributed to our transport choices. You can opt to drive less, share your ride, and swap to electric. Let’s dive into how the Anatomy of Action (AoA) explores the different ways you can move around your community to swap to having more intentionally positive impacts. 

Action 1: Keep Active

Humans around the world are sitting more than ever before in our human history, and much of the push to a sedentary lifestyle involves a long commute paired to work that is paired with sitting at a desk all day. These sedentary lifestyles have quickly taken a toll on human health, with over 300 million adults around the world being categorized as obese. 

Then there is  the environmental impact that all this individual vehicle use is having, but there are many ways to transport yourself from one place to another, offering a perfect opportunity to use your body to get around. Human-powered transport, like walking, biking, skateboarding, are great for a variety of reasons; it’s much cheaper, cleaner, and better for your general health, and the increase in more human forms of mobility often increases road safety. According to this research, “Increasing median daily walking and bicycling from 4 to 22 minutes reduced the burden of cardiovascular disease and diabetes by 14%, increased the traffic injury burden by 39%, and decreased greenhouse gas emissions by 14%.”  By just cycling to work, you reduce your chance of cancer by 45% and cardiovascular disease by 46%. In many places around the world, walking and cycling are the norm, but more can be done to enhance the infrastructure to ensure our cities are more human transport friendly. For example, introducing sidewalks in a city can reduce serious traffic injuries by 25%. 

Personal car transportation contributes huge impacts to air pollution and to your carbon footprint, so whenever you can, swap your car rides to human-powered transport options to help reduce these stats, to save costs and time, to reduce noise and congestion, and to encourage a shift in the way we design cities and move around them. 

#KeepActive Everyday Actions

1. Pre-check and choose routes for walking and cycling, give yourself extra time, get exercise, increase your productivity and health and wellness, and reduce your transport impact

2. Engage with green spaces and support urban conservation projects in your community by using public nature spaces for moving around, like bike paths

3. Give your productivity and personal wellness a boost by walking or cycling instead of taking short personal car rides 

4. Start a group of people commuting to work at the same time to make a walking or bike ‘bus’ if safety is of concern  

5. Swap short drives for walks or bike rides (or learn to rollerblade, skateboard, or scooter if you want a cooler way to get around)

6. Support local government initiatives to introduce better urban design, walkable cities, and mass public transport systems 

Action 2: Share your Ride

It’s true, sharing is caring! Not only does sharing car rides when you have to take them reduce emissions, but it also saves money. Transportation studies put “the annual cost of congestion at $160 billion, which includes 7 billion hours of time lost to sitting in traffic and an extra 3 billion gallons of fuel burned.” Or, consider this German study which has calculated that “a 10% increase in the modal share of walking and cycling in urban areas would mean that the German GDP would go up by 1.11% by 2030, representing €29bn, based on German GDP in 2012.” 

Of course, ride sharing will have positive impacts on air quality, too, which is a crucial point of intervention given that in 2014, 92% of the world population was living in places where the WHO air quality guidelines levels were not met. Rather than taking your car, by walking, cycling, or taking public transport like trains and busses, you not only lower your carbon footprint but also invest in the services to keep them functioning.  There are numerous case studies that show the positive flow-on effects of investing in design for human-powered transport or ride sharing — like this one from Portland, Oregon that found “the number of miles of bikeways (lanes, paths, and boulevards) increased 247% from 79 in 1991 to 274 in 2008. This coincided with the share of workers commuting by bicycle rising from 1.1% in 1990 to 6.0% in 2008.”

#ShareYourRide Everyday Actions

1. Join bike, scooter, or car share services if your city has them

2. Use public transport and give extra time to yourself (read a book, enjoy music, meet someone new)

3. Join rideshare apps or start collaborative commuting with your neighbours or friends 

4. When using on-demand taxi services, opt for the green option (if available) and the ride share option 

5. If available, consider intercity or intercountry rail services over short distance flights

Action 3: Go Cleaner

In addition to using your own body to get around and ride sharing, you can opt for electric forms of mobility to help reduce the harmful emissions at the city level caused by petrol-powered transport options. There are multiple benefits of low-carbon mobility, like an improved economy, reduced spending on imported fuel, increased energy security, and of course better human health. Globally we are seeing a rise in electric vehicle use and charging stations, so now is a great time to find ways of swapping to electric.

Many countries are offering financial incentives for low-carbon vehicles, like the UK who provides “100% first year allowance for business owners up to 2021, UK Plug-in Car Grant of £3,500, Exemption from London Congestion Charge, Significant Fuel Savings vs. a comparable Combustion Engine Car and no car fuel benefit for company cars, and Scottish customers can enjoy interest-free loans of up to £35,000 (personal) or up to £100,000”. And it’s not just passenger vehicles that we’re seeing electric options pop up; battery- and fuel cell–electric trucks and buses, especially transit buses, are already in operation across many US cities and are continuously expanding their fleets, not just in the US but also across the world. In fact, the global adoption of electric buses is expected to triple by 2025. 

#GoCleaner Everyday Actions

1. Explore all the options available to you getting around and find which ones have the least impact 

2. Adjust your routes so that you are going the least distance 

3. Swap short distance drives for alternative modes of transport 

4. Look for and ask about flexible working options to reduce your commute, such as working from home, video conferencing or later start times 

5. See if there are leasing services where you can give an electric car or bike a try

6. Swap your fossil fuel car to an electric one

7. Use cleaner fuel when you can

8. Support government or business initiatives that provide alternative fuel and cleaner transport options for your community 

Why the AoA?

There are no simple solutions to complex problems, and the transportation  issues we face are indeed complex. While the global environmental issues may be big and sometimes overwhelming, they are the outcomes of many individual actions. So, the choices we each make as individuals, as workers, and as members of societies have the potential to reinforce undesirable actions or to create the opportunity for new, more sustainable solutions. 

The actions outlined in the Anatomy of Action are are some of the top-level actions any individual can do to help support the global shift toward a more sustainable and regenerative future. No matter who you are, every action you take has an impact, so by taking these more considered actions, you can contribute to a global movement towards activating the SDG’s. There are many other things you can do; this list is by no means an exhaustive account of all the aspects of our lives, but all the actions in the Anatomy of Action offers a starter list that any individual, anywhere can take action on to help make a positive future for all of us!

Anatomy of Action: Getting to grips with STUFF!

Stuff! It is everywhere, all around us, fulfilling needs and helping to make our modern lives possible. But SO much stuff is wasted, useless, or unnecessary, and the impact of the material world is astronomical. Wherever you are right now, you can look around and see a bunch of stuff that has been manufactured, purchased, and at some point, will be waste - this linear economy has resulted in heaps of unintended negative consequences on the planet, many of which we are now seeing come around to hurt us - like ocean plastic waste. 

It’s hard not to get overwhelmed when thinking about the amount of “stuff” in this world. The average American household contains 300,000 items, an average British 10-year-old child owns 238 toys but usually only plays with 12 of them,  and 77 million automobiles will have been sold by the end of 2019.  With the rise of cheap manufacturing and convenience-driven shopping (free 2-day shipping, anyone?), stuff is now as ubiquitous in our lives as food, only it doesn’t nourish and sustain us but instead, it often simply takes up space — first in your home, then in a giveaway box or most likely, a landfill, with 99 percent of stuff being trashed within 6 months! We have become obsessed with buying sh*t we don’t necessarily need, and the economy is fueled by the hyper-consumption loop that drives the faulty GDP system. That’s why, for the second category of the Anatomy of Action, we tackle how to improve our consumption habits with thinking beyond buying, slowing down fashion, and ditching disposables. 

Action 1: Beyond Buying 

What’s behind so many of the negative environmental impacts we’re grappling with today? Although there’s no one singular, simple answer, we’d be remiss not to look at the linear economy that we’ve designed over the last century in order to meet human wants and needs. Our current economy is based on a waste-based system of production where we take raw materials and natural resources out of nature, process them into usable goods to meet human needs, and then discard them back into giant holes in the ground that, ironically, were often where we took the raw materials from to begin with.

This entire system is in opposition to the natural systems that sustain life on Earth — which are circular and regenerative — and it’s counterintuitive to the way we function as living organisms. For example, we all require nutrients to survive, which is part of the beautifully-designed system of nutrients cycling through bodies and back into the ground to grow the next generation of food; this nutrient cycle is one of the fundamental ecosystems that makes life on Earth possible. Basically, humans designed a broken system that needs waste to sustain itself, and thus everything is intended to constantly lose value after it's purchased. Our linear economy does not fit in a circular world, and we can instead find ways of circumnavigating this cycle and activating our agency within the economy by buying better things. 

This needs to be emphasized when we start to think “Beyond Buying”, as we cannot sustain the wasteful, reductive linear economy and thus need to transition to a circular economy in order to shift the status quo of our consumption problem. While many people automatically think that transitioning to circular systems design will result in monetary losses, it’s actually the opposite in that a circular economy offers some huge financial incentives. Current research indicates that the material saving potential alone, for example, is estimated at 500 billion € per year for the European industry, and the job creation potential of remanufacturing and recycling in Europe is estimated at one million new jobs!

Along with rethinking how we consume stuff and implementing circular design practices, there are also huge opportunities in sharing, swapping, repairing, and repurposing the things that we already have. Consider the fact that on average, cars in North America and Western Europe are only in use 8% of the time, or that the average electric drill is used 6 to 13 min over its lifetime. It makes absolutely no sense as to why we all need to own so many items individually, and it’s much more practical to consider collaborative consumption.

Similarly, we’ve also become accustomed to a throw-away economy in which instead of repairing our goods, we discard them and then replace them instead. This isn’t all the fault of the consumer, however — 77% of EU consumers say they’d rather repair goods than buy new ones, and indeed, there are systems issues with planned obsolescence and enforced disposability that encourage this uptick in buying new devices. This is especially true with tech gear and the trend of replacing smart phones on an annual basis (there are now more phones on this planet than people!), which is a massive missed economic opportunity among its other issues. In fact, a United Nations University report estimates “the value of the recoverable materials in discarded electronics was $52 billion dollars in 2014 alone.”  Similarly, if the industry were better regulated and made phones easier to take apart and recapture, then the cost of remanufacturing them could be reduced by 50% per device. 

So, as you can see through this small snapshot, there are huge opportunities in moving away from this exploitative economy and moving beyond buying. This is, in short, what the circular economy is all about: meeting our needs with new sustainable product designs, service delivery models, and new approaches to business where we get better experiences with less stuff. To start, we can find ways of introducing things into our daily lives that have more value and last longer, reduce disposability, and maximize material recapture. 

Whilst we wait for all producers of goods and services to adopt these new approaches, consumers of all walks of life can be more conscious of what they need, what they are buying, and how they value the things that fill our lives. Increasing the usable life by repairing, sharing, reselling, and reducing helps reduce the need for new goods. If you can, invest in goods with longer warranties and design durability, and find companies that offer buyback and repair schemes for their products along with swapping and sharing things you need. Consider what you need before you buy products so that you can ensure you acquire things that will last longer, be used multiple times, and are intended to be in the economy for as long as possible before being waste. 

#BeyondBuying Everyday Actions: 

1. Consider what you really need and what impacts these have on the planet before making buying stuff and reduce what you buy

2. Continue or start sharing, swapping things like appliances, tools, clothes, talents and services

3. For new purchases, look into how you can get what you need via a service or a product that lasts longer and has been made sustainably 

4. Find things with extended warranties and that can be repaired, and then make sure you repair things

5. Buy beautiful second hand things and find new homes for things you no longer want

6. For technologies and gadgets use them longer, repair and donate them and ensure you find a reliable recycler at the end of their life 

7. Delete old emails and other files stored on the cloud (servers use heaps of energy)

8. Offer your technical skills and talents to extend product use, help others, and build a sense of community

9. Recommend and buy from companies that provide spare parts to repair, that offer take back services or use recycled materials in production

Action 2: Fashion Slow Down

One of the most pervasive subcategories of stuff that accumulates and creates waste is found in textiles. Fashion is a hyper-fast, resource-intensive industry that impacts nearly everyone on the planet in some way. We all wear clothes not only for functionality, but also to express a certain style and identity. But with global clothing production doubling in the last 15 years,  the fast fashion phenomenon exacerbates labor conditions (excessive dust, heat, rodents, lack of sanitation, etc.), and product quality is pushed as low as possible by brands to make inventory on a weekly basis. And then, after the newest styles are purchased for the thrill of newness and a low price, they often just sit in one’s closet, unworn. According to research by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, “...the average number of times a garment is worn before it ceases to be used has decreased by 36% compared to 15 years ago, and the same pattern is emerging in China, where clothing utilisation has decreased by 70% over the last 15 years.” 

You know what happens next — after garments sit unworn in a closet for some time, they are then shipped off to the landfill whenever a tidying-up urge hits. Recycling isn’t happening: 84% of all textile waste is sent directly to landfills. Of course, all of this negatively impacts climate conditions, whereas  “reuse of clothing saves 29kg CO2e per kg of clothing compared to recycling and 33kg CO2e compared to disposal.” When we configure the economics of this environmental disaster, we find that “globally, customers miss out on USD 460 billion of value each year by throwing away clothes that they could continue to wear and some garments are estimated to be discarded after just seven to ten wears.”

 You can avoid contributing to this by breaking the vicious cycle perpetuated by constantly changing clothes by finding responsible brands that support the betterment of workers and the environment or by buying second hand. In becoming a conscious and responsible consumer through the power of your decision making, you will help the environment and society in significant ways.  

#FashionSlowdown Everyday Actions

1. Celebrate being unique - buy vintage, redesign old clothes, create a core basic or ‘capsule’ wardrobe, and be bold in your fashion choices

2. Give your clothes a second chance: share, reuse, repair, recycle, sell, and donate high-quality fashion for second-hand use

3. Think long-term: buy quality clothes that last and take care of them. Today’s new pieces are tomorrow's vintage treasures 

4. Let brands know when you are not happy with their practices and help encourage them to move towards sustainable production

5. Use your consumer power to buy better clothes and to increase the availability of more sustainable fashion options

6. Ask brands about how best to take care of their clothes, how they produce and source, and how they are committed to sustainability 

Action 3: Ditch Disposables

We have a collective global challenge unprecedented in the history of humans on this Earth. We have designed ourselves into a tightly-wound system of disposability that is wreaking havoc on the systems that sustain us all. No human is immune to these outcomes from our collective actions, as no one can deny that they need food, air, and water to survive and thrive. Thus, we are all implicated in the necessity to dramatically redesign our manufacturing, production, and consumption systems to be post disposable.

From the oceans to the air, our natural systems have become innocent victims of our hyper-disposable cycles of meeting human needs. This is not an alarmist warning — this is a biophysical realty of the planet we all share. The data tells the story here; with over 320 million tons of plastic being consumed globally and more plastic produced in the last decade than ever before, plastic is infiltrating all of our natural systems, especially the ocean with more than 8 million tons of it leaking into the ocean each year, thanks to poor disposal practices, broken recycling systems, and the lack of waste management in emerging economies where plastic is pervasive.

The UNEP reported in 2018, “Only nine percent of the nine billion tonnes of plastic the world has ever produced has been recycled. Most ends up in landfills, dumps or in the environment. If current consumption patterns and waste management practices continue, then by 2050 there will be around 12 billion tonnes of plastic litter in landfills and the environment. By this time, if the growth in plastic production continues at its current rate, then the plastics industry may account for 20 percent of the world’s total oil consumption.”  And we’re just scratching the surface on how all of this is also impacting human health, as we’ve recently learned that 90% of table salts contain microplastics and the average adult consumes approximately 2,000 microplastics per year through salt.

All over the world, our daily lives are overwhelmed with single-use products and plastics, from packaging to beverage cups and bags. As shared by UNEP, "The most common single-use plastics found in the environment are, in order of magnitude, cigarette butts, plastic drinking bottles,  plastic bottle caps, food wrappers, plastic grocery bags, plastic lids, straws and stirrers, other types of plastic bags, and foam take-away containers. These are the waste products of a throwaway culture that treats plastic as a disposable material rather than a valuable resource to be harnessed." 

Disposable products are not just hazardous for the environment but also costly to remove and hard to recycle. By ditching disposables in whatever way you can, you are supporting the global movement to go #zerowaste and sending signals to producers and stores that we don't want plastic in our oceans and littering our streets. This is more important than ever before with the recent global shakeup stemming from China refusing to take more recycling — by 2030,  it’s estimated that 111 million metric tons of plastic waste will be displaced due to this new law.  But the good news is that from personal beverage containers to shopping in bulk and even making your own cleaning products, there are hundreds of micro actions you can take to support the global trend towards a post disposable future.

#DitchDisposables Everyday Actions:

1. Swap daily disposables such as straws, bags, coffee cups, take out food containers, forks, razors, sanitary products for reusable alternatives, you will save money in the long run 

2. Continue or start to buy at bulk food stores and bring your own containers and bags to take products home in 

3. Carry your own vessel for water and hot drinks 

4. Rethink food storage to eliminate plastic baggies and wrap, you can swap to reusable containers and beeswax wraps 

5. Clean greener- from toothpaste to household cleaning products there are alternative and often cheaper ways of getting things clean such as bicarb soda and vinegar 

6. Replace disposable hygiene products with reusable ones, such as swapping pads & tampons for the menstrual cups and moon pads

7. Consider ways to refill products like cleaning and household liquids in bulk to reduce packaging 

8. Use your consumer power where you shop, eat, and work to voice the change you want to see and reduce disposability from our lives!

Why the AoA?

There are no simple solutions to complex problems, and the consumption issues we face are indeed complex. While the global environmental and social issues being big and often overwhelming, it is important to be reminded that they are in part the outcomes of many individual actions. So, the choices we each make as individuals, as workers, and as members of societies have the potential to reinforce undesirable actions or to create the opportunity for new, more sustainable solutions to emerge.

The actions outlined in the Anatomy of Action are the top-level actions any individual can take to help support the global shift toward a more sustainable and regenerative future. No matter who you are, every action you take has an impact. By taking these more considered actions, you can contribute to a global movement for a more sustainable future. There are many other things you can do; this list is by no means an exhaustive account of all the aspects of our lives where we need to tackle to meet the SDGs. But it’s a starter list that any individual, anywhere can take action on to help make a positive future for all of us! 

Anatomy of Action: Thumbs up for Food!

Food! Delicious, terrible, gross, amazing —  everyone loves it, we all need it, Instagram is filled with it, and it's the biggest impact of our daily lives, which is exactly why we chose it as the first action in our Anatomy of Action (AoA) set. Let’s take a look at the issues and opportunities that we all have with the food in our life, via the three action areas that we set out in the AoA: protein swaps, using all your food, and growing your own. Then pick and action and get started!

ACTION 1: PROTEIN SWAP 

If you’re at all into sustainability, then you’ve surely heard that reducing meat consumption — which we have coined as “Protein Swaps” in the AoA to have a more positive, inclusive impact —  has a tremendously positive impact on the planet’s health and the well-being of billions of animals and people. But before narrowing down on that, it’s important to point out that the staggering increase in meat production that we have all experienced in our lifetimes is a brand new phenomenon — never before in human history have we humans eaten so much meat. Experts estimate that total meat production has increased 4-5 fold since 1961, and in order to meet the demand, over 70% of the world’s farm animals are now factory farmed (including 99% of the animals in the US!). This massive uptick in meat production is accompanied by a massive uptick in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (and a huge freshwater footprint), with livestock and their byproducts accounting for at least 32,564 million tons of CO2e per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions. Which all makes sense when you discover that every year in the US alone, according to the US Meat Institute 9 billion chickens (yes that’s a B), 32.2 million cattle and calves, 241.7 million turkeys, 2.2 million sheep and lambs, and 121 million hogs are killed for meat consumption (here is a creepy real time kill clock).  

Given the astounding snapshot of just how pervasive factory farmed meat is, there are, of course, many health and planet impacts that we are often blind to. Without going too much into the details, mass produced meat-based proteins contribute to desertification, deforestation, and nutrification (as well as the development of oceanic dead zones), all while subjecting factory-confined animals to heaps of animal cruelty issues.

It’s no surprise then that various governments around the world are encouraging citizens to adopt a more plant-based diet. For example, Canada released a new national food guide in 2019 that focused on plant-based eating, whereas the UK and the Chinese lawmakers have made statements about the benefits of reducing meat consumption. Similarly, New Zealand’s 2019 Sustainability Report also urges citizens to begin eating more plants, less meat, as did the popular EAT-Lancet Commission Report released earlier in 2019. The US, one of the worlds biggest meat consumers, is also seeing a change in consumer preferencing, with more people opting for plant-centric eating. 

Swapping meat-centric food habits for meals with different protein sources is good for your health and for the environment. In many parts of the world this is already a way of life. The best way to re-shape our global food systems is for people to swap meat to plant based options. By making the switch to a more vegetable-friendly diet and being more selective in where your meat comes from (adopt a flexitarian or reducetarian diet!), you can improve your health, lower GHG emissions and reduce biodiversity loss. 

#ProteinSwaps Everyday Actions

1. Swap animal protein for more plant-based proteins 

2. Diversify your diet and cook more at home

3. Eat what is seasonally available 

4. Opt for locally-produced foods; seek out local farmers and markets that offer sustainable produce

5. Talk with your friends and family about healthy and sustainable food options to encourage them to swap their diets too 

6. Become an everyday/weekday vegetarian, vegan, or flexitarian 

7. Try to have a rainbow of vegetables on your plate in every meal

ACTION 2: USE ALL YOUR FOOD

Another enormous problem within our food systems that we examined through the AoA is the issue of prolific food waste — 1.3 billion tons are wasted each year, which is an incredible one-third of all food produced globally for human consumption. This isn’t just an ironic issue in the face of widespread world hunger; it also means that “huge amounts of the resources used in food production are used in vain, and that the greenhouse gas emissions caused by production of food that gets lost or wasted are also emissions in vain." And what about the end-of-life for this wasted food in landfills? Given that on average, the carbon footprint of food wastage is around 500 kg CO2 eq. per capita and per year, there are enormous environmental and fiscal opportunities in reducing food waste. In fact, it’s estimated by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that the U.K. could save “USD 1.1 billion a year on landfill cost by keeping organic food waste out of landfills—this would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7.4 million tonnes p.a. and could deliver up to 2 GWh worth of electricity and provide much-needed soil restoration and specialty chemicals.” For these reasons and more, the second action area focus of our AoA food exploration is all about using all your food. 

Using all your food helps reduce food waste which, in trash heaps and landfills, leads to releases of leachates and methane (which is 30x times more potent than CO2). Food scraps and stale bread are not trash at all! They are filled with the building blocks of life-nutrients, which your body and soil can use (replacing fertilizers and chemicals). So, by getting organics out of open dumps and landfills, we can reduce emissions released into the air and give nutrients back to the soil to produce healthier and tastier plants.

#UseAllYourFood Everyday Actions

1. Design your meals to use up the entire food product

2. Buy only what you can finish or save — don’t waste food after all you paid for it. If you throw it away, you are tossing your money in the trash 

3. When buying foods, avoid excessive packaging and take your own produce bags

4. Seek out "ugly" fruit and vegetables to give them a life in your meal

5. Manage how you store food to maximize freshness, such as using sealed containers in your fridge and pantry 

6. Get (more) into canning, preserves, and freezing to extend food life 

7. Make stock out of food scraps 

8. Compost your food scraps 

9. Share excess food to help ensure everyone has enough (there are many apps that help with this)

10. Find out what’s available in your neighborhood and advocate for communal composting and organic waste processing solutions 

ACTION 3: GROW YOUR OWN

Of course there are many food options for a healthy person and planet, but our 3rd one for the AoA supports you growing your own food and connecting to where it comes from in order to save money and to reduce transport, packaging, and food waste. While we hear a lot of conversation about plastic water bottles and plastic bags — especially when talking about plastic bans — the lesser known truth is that food’s plastic packaging accounts for nearly 50% of plastic waste (!) as waste is generated along the entire life cycle of food products, from the growing practices through to the supermarket and home wastage.

By growing your own food, even if it only replaces just some of what you would otherwise buy, you can connect better to what you eat and reduce the impacts that occur from the growing, packaging, transport, retail practices and food waste. Producing some of your own food has multiple benefits so even a small amount of home grown produce is a great way to start.

Access to land and time to garden of course varies, so if you can’t grow your own food, consider finding local farmers and support them or join a farmers cooperative. There are many benefits to small scale community agriculture — better food, more nutrients, higher air and soil quality, pollinator plants for bees and inspects, and an enhanced sense of community.

#GrowYourOwn Everyday Actions

1. Farm, plant, and grow whatever you can, wherever you can 

2. Start or join an urban school or kitchen garden

3. Connect with your food: find out where your food comes from and how it is produced  

4. Regrow vegetables like leeks, carrots, and beets in your house in a glass of water instead of discarding them 

5. If you can’t grow food yourself, support a local sustainable farmer or shop at farmers markets 

6. Promote, develop, and support initiatives in your building, street, or  community that increases your access to food-growing space 

FOOD!

There are no simple solutions to complex problems, and the food issues we face are indeed complex. While the global environmental issues are big and sometimes overwhelming, they are the outcomes of many individual actions, and of course the decisions made by governments and industry as well. Food is certainly a vital area for progress and change which can start with us exerting our influence over the demand side of the system.

So, the choices we make as individuals, as workers, and as members of societies have the potential to reinforce undesirable actions or to create the opportunity for new, more sustainable solutions.

The actions outlined in the Anatomy of Action are the top-level actions an individual can do to help support the global shift toward shared good-life goals (check out the AoA action validation report to discover more). No matter who you are, every action you take has an impact.

By taking these more considered lifestyle choices, you can contribute to a global movement for a more sustainable future. There are many other things you can do; this list is by no means an exhaustive account of all the aspects of our lives where we need to tackle to meet the SDGs. But it’s a starter list that any individual, anywhere can take action on to help make a positive future for all of us! 

Introducing our UNEP collaboration: The Anatomy of Action

By Leyla Acaroglu

Over the last year, the UnSchool team and I have been working on an exciting project in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to activate sustainable living and lifestyles.

The outcome is the Anatomy of Action, and this week, we are launching it into the world!

Here are the how’s and why’s of this exciting new initiative. 

When I talk about sustainability, a topic I have spoken about a lot over the last 15 years of my career, people often react in one of three ways: 1. they are really into the idea but don’t know what to do about it; 2. they are openly hostile about it, usually because they have had a bad experience with some form of environmentally-motivated actions/product etc; or, 3. they are confused by what it actually means and whether it is achievable, which makes them feel overwhelmed by it.

I try to remind people that sustainability is about the social, economic, and environmental considerations of what we do in our personal lives, the way we do business, and the government decisions that our elected representatives make on our behalf so that we can sustain the systems (such as food, air, and water) that every single living thing on Earth needs to survive and thrive. What it is not is a hippy-dippy, tree-hugging, wishy washy, anti-business concept that means you have to give up a lot and go back to the ‘dark ages,’ which is literally what some people who fall into the openly-hostile category have said to me. By being human, you need the planet, and as a result of our collective actions, the planet now needs us to alter damaging practices and replace them with more sustainable and regenerative ones. 

I will be the first to admit that we have a whole bunch of historical legacy issues to overcome when it comes to sustainability, as, in the past, actions by environmental movements and organizations have accidentally pigeon-holed the ways in which people view and care about the planet. Whilst often very good intentioned, the use of fear and shaming have been two well-executed tools in a space that often ends up being polarized between people who ‘care’ about the planet and those who ‘don’t’ — which is very strange when all people need the planet to live and thus don’t really have the option to not care about it. 

There are also many issues with the boom in greenwashing that we are still trying to shake off from industries who spend more money on marketing green credentials rather than doing them, and thus the resulting consumer cynicism from people who feel they were duped into buying crappy, often more expensive, so-called ‘green’ products. 

Now, though, we are in a more sophisticated era of understanding the ways in which we can design products and services that meet human needs but don’t destroy the systems that sustain us all. That's really what the core of sustainability as a practice is — a better understanding of systems and how we participate in them, which then leads to more informed and creative decision-making around how we all live well on this shared planet. And by shared, I mean not just with all the 7.5 billion other humans, but also the biological miracle that is the diversity of all the different species that make Earth the only known life-sustaining plant in the universe.

The current trend toward circularizing the economy is, in part, a reaction to the phenomenal waste crisis that we have designed ourselves into. The sad reality is that yes, recycling is broken, and we have global supply chains churning out stuff designed for the dump every second of every day. With many people profiting off this linear system, it does seem hard to turn the tides on such a well-oiled production-to-waste machine.

But now, many of us humans are seeing the feedback loops from this by way of mounds of ocean plastic waste and air pollution, which is one of the world’s biggest killers. In fact, cities around the world regularly peak above the WHO safe living index, and recent studies have shown the link between air pollution and all sorts of cognitive issues like Alzheimer’s disease. And then there is the climate crisis, a massive, scary, overwhelming concept that is freaking many people out. So, what in all of this mess and chaos is one individual to do about this, when we are presented with so many issues in need of solutions like the 17 in the Sustainable Development Goals? How do we overcome the inertia felt by the magnitude of the issues at hand, when we see there are just so many things that need to be addressed and we are just individuals trying to live a good life? How on Earth do we do anything that has any impact at all? 

Every issue holds its own solution, and that’s the case here. We each make up the world by the actions we take; the planet is in the state it's in not because we exist, but because we do the things we do each day. Sure, many choices are taken out of our hands and all industries and governments have a lot to answer for when it comes to obtaining a sustainable and positive future. But for each of us, we hold in our own two hands the opportunities to change the economy, as it is made up of all our individual actions accumulated as an economic outcome.

If you have ever worked for a company that sells goods or services, you will know that the trends in consumer behavior are the things that dictate the next steps for the company. So, let’s say you work for a large supermarket chain, and suddenly, people start avoiding overly-packaged products. When you look into why, you discover it's because of the concerns about ocean plastic waste and that there is a trend toward package-free products. So then, you make a case to your boss to have package-free options that meets the rising trend in consumer preferences. That is how the market works — actions breed reactions in the market — so if we want to be a part of designing a future that works better than today, then we need to redesign our lives to mimic the kind of future we want to live in. 

The complexity of sustainability is in the fact that we don’t really have all the answers yet. There is much work to do on the technical solutions to meeting our needs in more regenerative and planet-positive ways, like how do we mass-produce carbon-free energy and provide power for transport devices as large as airplanes? But, the very fact that we discovered how to fly was a miracle not too long ago, so the future will result is these issues being addressed, once we have a more widespread acceptance of the base reality that all humans need the planet and that our actions have negative impacts on it that, in turn, negatively impact us all. There is absolutely no escaping this, no matter how much power or wealth you may have. 

But, there are many things we can do, and I want to make it really clear that we each have agency and some kind of control over the future we create, even if it doesn’t seem like it at times. We make up the economy through our actions, and in turn, the economic system dictates what we value and how we live our lives. So, we are in a dynamic relationship that often feels as though the way things are is the way things have and will always be. But 10 years ago, smartphones were a brand new thing, and 20 years ago, we all had to plug our desktop computers into a phone line to access this new thing called the Internet. As such, in 10 or 20 years, the future will be very different from today, and I, for one, will be working to ensure that the kind of future we end up in is more equitable, sustainable, and regenerative than today. 

This is my very long introduction to a project we have been working on with the United Nations Environment Program’s economic division. For the last year, we have been exploring what types of actions individuals can take that will actually have an impact, if replicated and normalized, as part of people's everyday lifestyle actions. The outcome is the Anatomy of Action, an initiative we will launch this week at UNESCO in Paris. We wanted to not only design something that supports lifestyle changes for sustainable living, but also base it on a deeper understanding of what is working, along with why and how to amplify it so that we get new types of behavioral normals that encourage positive shifts within the economy. 

In 2016, I was awarded Champion of the Earth by the UNEP for my work with the UnSchool and my creative products that bring a science-based, innovative approach to sustainability. So it was fitting that we would find a way to collaborate on the complex and fascinating topic of sustainable lifestyles and how to activate more of them. 

For this collaboration, my team and I started by shining a light on all the bright spots of organically-growing cultural movements that exist outside of the traditional sustainability or environmental movements — things like zero waste, minimalism, guerilla gardening, ride sharing, etc. We identified over 80 movements, categorized them into which everyday lifestyle areas they were addressing, and then dissected the actions that these movements were identifying and taking. Next, we searched for the last five years of peer-reviewed academic papers and studies to see which of these hundreds of identified actions have positive impacts if amplified out among more people.

This helped us refine the list of actions down into a more detailed action heat map, and from that, we developed the five themes that make up the Anatomy of Action: food, stuff, movement, money, and fun. Experts within the UN system then reviewed the long lists of validated actions and confirmed the high-level ones that we could share as significant actions that anyone can take to have a positive impact in their daily lives.

The resulting 15 sub-actions are all positively framed; for example, we are not asking everyone to go vegan (which is shown will have significantly positive impacts) but instead to ‘protein swap’, which everyone can do a few meals a week. We chose this intentional language because we know that globally, food options are very different, and health conceptions as well as cultural conventions are also very diverse. For me, a protein swap is achievable, and if we get more people doing this, it will encourage meat producers to move away from intensive factory farming and instead, produce high quality, ethical, grass-fed meat, which will result in a better place with many environmental impacts. 

The action set presented in the Anatomy of Action shows everyday lifestyle swaps that fit easily into daily lifestyle choices. I drew heavily on behavioral and cognitive sciences to gain an insight into how to frame these actions as opportunities rather than losses, as the reality with sustainability is that it is a massive opportunity! For example, the benefits in swapping your car drive for human-powered transport are massive. Not only do you get exercise, but also the less cars we have in urban environments, the better air quality we get. Additionally, there is a lot of research as to when people disrupt their daily habits and rituals — usually when there are already in an altered life state, such as going on vacation, having a baby, or moving houses. This struck me as fascinating, as we often fall into rutted ways of doing things, and as the old adage goes, “A change is as good as a holiday,” because change often brings positive results for us. 

• Part of the Anatomy of Action asset set, Illustrations by Emma Segal. See all assets here

In designing and making the Anatomy of Action, I wanted to create a memorable, but simple memetic tool that reminds us all of the choices we make everyday. Nearly everyone has hands and we see them in front of us everyday, doing the things that make up our lives, so this reference is easy to remember when taking actions. But the critical thing is taking action! So to launch the initiative, we are challenging everyone to pick one of the actions, swap to it, and then share your habit disruptions on social media, tagging three friends to challenge them to get started too. Then repeat! For example, I personally moved banks for the UnSchool and started to move over other banks for my personal life because part of the research showed that divestment from banks and energy providers that are relying on the old carbon-producing industries could be done pretty easily. It takes time, for sure, but the outcome is investing in the kind of companies I want to see more of and divesting from the ones that need to change. 

Keep in mind that, due to the need to reach a diverse range of humans around the globe who live among different circumstances, the final action set is simply a chunk of things you can start doing now, but there are MANY things you can do and that need to be done. The next stage in our progress toward a sustainable future is discovering the things that we have impact on, both in negative and positive ways, and then designing these so that they are more effective and efficient. That's exactly what we're doing with sustainability — we are researching and working to figure out where the impacts are and what we can each do to address these, in our lives, in our businesses, and through the actions we take everyday that have an impact on the economy. 

We need many approaches to communicating, engaging, and activating a sustainable, circular, regenerative future. The Anatomy of Action is just one, but I hope it inspires you to reconsider some of the daily lifestyle choices you make, as well as how we each impact the economy and how, in turn, it impacts us, because the future is made up of our actions today. In doing so, we can all, over time, work to change the narrative of sustainability and design a future that works better than today.

Yes, Recycling is Broken

By Leyla Acaroglu 

This pains me to write, but we all have to come to terms with the harsh reality that recycling validates waste and is a placebo to the complex waste crisis we have designed ourselves into. The things you are separating and putting in your recycling bins are probably not being recycled — and there’s a good chance that they are ending up somewhere you never imagined. 

The current recycling crisis, where much of the diligently separated waste is not getting recycled, started in January 2018, when China announced that they would stop taking the world’s recycling through enacting their “National Sword” policy, which after more than 25 years of accepting two-thirds of the world’s plastic waste, suddenly banned the import of most plastics and other recyclable materials.  This move not only stunned the world, but it also suddenly ripped the band-aid off that was holding together recycling as a viable solution to the single-use product proliferation around the world.  

A year(ish) has passed since the new Chinese legislation came into effect, and their plastic imports have dropped by 99%, forcing the bulk of the global recyclables to be landfilled, incinerated, stockpiled on docks, cast out into the environment, or sent to other countries in the region. The latter is an equally unpopular move where many countries are now openly rejecting foreign trash.  Experts now estimate that as much as 111 million metric tons of plastic waste will be displaced by 2030. 

Recycling is a lovely idea when it works; in fact it's a fundamental part of the circular economy, after, of course, sharing services, remanufacturing and repair. But like any system that displaces the responsibility somewhere out of sight, the externalities come back around to bite us all in the ass eventually. Ocean plastic waste is just one of the massive unintended consequences of relying on a quick fix, which then, in turn, reinforces the problem you are trying to solve. Systems thinking 101: the easy way out often leads back in, and there are often no quick fixes to complex problems. Recycling as a solution has reinforced the problem, and now we are dealing with a ‘frankenproblem’. 

There has been an unfair reliance on consumers to be the responsible parties in dealing with the rise of disposable items. This is after producers and retailers have decided, without consultation, to wrap everything in plastic or replace reusables with disposables, normalizing the use of single use items by claiming them to be more hygienic and convenient than their reusable counterparts. 

There are many coinciding aspects with how this further exacerbates the issue. For example, take the issue of contamination (one of the motivators for China to stop accepting the world’s trash): many everyday items that can’t be recycled are mixed in with recyclables. Or soiled materials, like a coffee cups or food packaging, get in with clean items and then make a mess of the rest. Then there is “wishcycling,” when people who are so conditioned to “do the right thing” that they toss whatever they wish could be recycled into the recycling bin, hoping that the trash fairy will ensure that it gets recaptured and magically turned into something useful again (another spoiler: they don’t).  Furthermore, there is no universal recycling system, nor are there practices to teach an ever increasingly globalized world how to manage the complexity of this diverse practice. Nearly every state and country has different rules about how to recycle. In some places it's rinse and separate, in others it's pop it all together (no need to rinse), and in others there are very detailed separation techniques for all the different types of plastics (identified by the small number at the base of the plastic item). So we have well-intentioned citizens getting lumped with the responsibility of deciphering what they should and should not do, whilst producers make add more complex materials to the system. Of course there are just the lazy people too, who throw whatever wherever, further increasing the contamination rates, and this just makes the cost of recycling higher and results in more recyclables ending up being dumped in landfill. 

Good intentioned and well-trained recyclers the world over are up in arms over the news reports that their hard work to get things into the right waste streams is amounting to nothing. And countries around the world are sending contaminated loads of recycling back to their parent countries — often wealthy, consuming nations like England, Canada, Australia, United States, Germany, and the rest of Europe. What we have actually created is a system of dumping a waste legacy on developing economies, as few rich countries have localized recycling facilities to coup with the amount of trash generated. 

Consumer waste and recycling is a broken system that can’t be solved by just better recycling alone. Don't get me wrong — recycling, remanufacturing, and repair all have their place in the transition to a circular and regenerative economy, but the reliance on a cure-all magic system that takes your old clamshell salad box and turns it into something just as valuable and useful is very far away from the reality of the current status quo. The undeniable issue is that we have created a disposable culture, and no amount of recycling will fix it. We need to remedy this illness at the root cause: producer-enforced disposability and the rapid increase of a throwaway culture being normal. 

The systems failure: enforced disposability & a normalized throwaway culture

Single-use throwaway stuff permeates our day-to-day lives; it's hard to avoid a coffee cup here, a plastic bag there, some wooden chopsticks at lunch, or that boxed take-out Thai food for dinner. While it’s most prevalent in the food industry — bottles, cups, lids, straws, grocery bags, produce bags, cutlery, produce wrap, and even those single-serve little sauce sachets — recently, design for disposability has moved into the medical, transport, and government sectors just as much. Over the last 60 years since the invention of cheap plastics, and even more so in the last 15 years, since the rise in the cult of busy, we have literally designed ourselves into a disposable society. 

I have written about this before in this article on Systems Failures: Planned Obsolescence and Enforced Disposability:  “Many of the goods and services we all rely on are created with the specific intent to lose value over time so that the consumer is stuck in an enforced consumption cycle, which increases value for the producer, but not for the customer nor the planet. And the cost of dealing with all of this reduced value stuff is placed back on the customer and local governments in the form of funding local waste management services.”

That’s right, the decision by a producer or even your local cafe to swap to disposables is then costing you money in either general waste (ie landfill fees) or recycling — both of which are costly aspects for local government to manage, so much so that many are ditching recycling all together! The cost of running these cumbersome recycling systems is also one of the reasons so much plastic waste is escaping into nature via the rivers and oceans of Southeast Asia, as the rapid transition to disposable plastics has not been met by an increase in municipal waste management services. 

Recently I illustrated the extent of how we don’t see the costs of invisible things in a TEDx talk in Lisbon. 


Around the world, daily options for obtaining basic needs such as food and water have dramatically changed over the last two decades, from a reusable user experiences to a crappy plastic or paper single-use disposable option. For many, it feels cheap because it is, and it feeds into the speedy convenience-fueled lifestyles that currently dominates societies. But the long-term costs are much greater than the immediate cost cutting and time-saving perceived benefits. I know there are many hygiene benefits and that the bendy plastic straw help many people in hospitals or who are disabled, I get that a disposable diaper is so much easier than washing them, but the extent of disposable single-use products is fundamentally unsustainable. And the really insidious issue here is that we are all paying for this! We pay for the cost of a disposable lifestyle embedded in the cost of these services and products, pay for it again through local taxes, and then we pay for it collectively in the loss of natural environments like beaches and waterways. We pay for it when 90% of table salt ends up filled with microplastics, and we will continue to pay for it as long as we continue to believe that there are no consequences to our disposable addictions. 

As  awareness about environmental issues associated with waste has risen, so too has the quick fix of “make it recyclable” as a solution to disposability. This has validated the production of single-use product streams. It has given way to the myth of ‘good’ (paper) and ‘bad’ (plastic) materials, which is so problematic as all materials have impacts, but it also has distracted us from the real issue all whilst more and more products and services have shifted to disposable from reusable. 

What frustrates me to no end is that so many agents in the system just deflect responsibility to other parts. The plastic manufacturers say that the brand owners don’t want to change, and the brand owners blame the customers who then blame their governments who then blame the retails or the companies, and the cycle of blame continues. The reality is that plastic is a fantastic material for durable products, like reusable packaging systems that can be easily sterilized and reused. For example, I was on a flight recently where the food was provided in a thick plastic reusable bento box that had a salad and a snack in it, no plastic packaging, simple box wrap (although they did have disposable utensils…) but it was designed to be washed and reused over and over again. Of course washing has its own impacts too, but there is always a break-even point that can be factored into the systems design. The design solutions are actually really simple and the infrastructure interventions often financially viable, but the will to make change by societies’ institutions is significantly lacking. Where are all the pioneers who will help flip the script on our disposable world?

In the meantime, the burden of change comes down to you and me and our communities to refuse unless it's reusable — to reject the system that has been thrust upon us by ditching disposables and demanding better products and services. Of course, this is difficult for many people, but each and every action you can take does send price signals through the economy. I recently heard of a large supermarket retailer trialing package-free dispensers because they saw a shift in the market, which is dictated by economic actions of people everyday. Simply put — we need a reusable revolution to get us out of the recycling mess.

The story of Recycling is the Story of Intentional Misdirection

Magicians use misdirection to direct their audience to see what they want them to see so that they can trick you into believing what they have done is really magic. This is very similar to the tactic used to get our society to a place where recycling symbolizes the height of environmentalism. Our living grandparents will laugh at the idea of waste; they will tell us that they most likely never even had a trash bin. What was life like before disposable plastic? It was a lot more washing up, by the ‘save and reuse’ practices that, just a few generations ago, were the norm quickly got designed out of the modern world with the advent of cheap disposable materials.  

The big shift towards normalized disposability was initiated in 1970, when the first Earth Day was celebrated in the US, with this famous Keep America Beautiful ad: it features an Italian-American actor poised as a Native American who sheds a single tear as an oblivious passerby chucks a bag of trash out of his car window, into the street. Playing on people’s emotions, the ad then drills a message that we still have internalized today: “People start pollution. People can stop it.” It took two sentences to shift the blame and guilt on disposable items away from the producers of the new disposable economy and onto the citizens they had thrust it upon. 

This ad and many others to come were funded by Keep America Beautiful (KAB), a front for a lobby group made up of representatives from the major beverage companies. The very strategic goal was to turn the attention away from the rising concern for the environment in a post-Vietnam era, as soda and milk bottles were swapped out from reusable ones (which cost the companies money in collecting and washing) to the disposable alternatives. The slight of hand trick was to make out as though the problem was not the calculated shift to normalizing disposability, but the acts of the individuals, who prior to this, were not used to non-biodegradable materials filling their daily lives. 

It’s valuable to interject here a comparison of a recycling system that holds manufacturers accountable, rather than consumers. Such a system can be found in Germany, who is considered to have one of the best recycling systems in the world, in which it recycles nearly 70% of its waste. Many trace this success back to a package ordinance that was passed in 1991, in which it “required manufacturers to take responsibility for the recycling of their product packaging after a consumer was finished using it. This included transportation packaging, secondary packaging (i.e., the box around soda cans) and the primary packaging (i.e., the soda can).” Then, in 1996, the Closed Substance Cycle and Waste Management Act was established, and it “applies to anyone that produces, markets or consumes goods and dictates that they are responsible for the materials’ reuse, recycling or environmentally sound disposal. This act particularly targeted producers and encouraged them to focus on one of three waste management strategies: waste avoidance, waste recovery and environmentally compatible disposal.” 

The contrast in policy and in recycling success rates here further solidifies that manufacturers should be held accountable for packaging and that the solution is sustainable, circular design. 

Redesigning systems: what happens now?

Now that China is no longer accepting the world’s recycling waste, we need to have more efficient localized recycling systems in places that help to close the loop and bring about the transition to the circular economy. The challenge is how can you help make that happen?  Additionally, closed loop service provision systems like the recently launched Loop, will help dramatically eliminate single use packaging at least. 

We are always finding ways to help people make positive change at the UnSchool and overcoming the inertia that often seeps in when problems of this magnitude are presented. So, here are some really good first steps you can start with. Individual lifestyle swaps: get some small wins under your belt to motivate you and influence others around you, by refusing single-use, taking your own, asking for reusables, or refusing to buy something. This has positive ripple effects, as the more people who see a new practice, the more normal it becomes in society at large. It might seem futile, but bigger systemic impacts come through the regular consumption choices we make everyday. Look also at what you can do it your professional life by letting your workplace know you want to help them swap from disposables to reusables.  Enough people doing this in the world at large will redesign the normalization habits of hyper-disposability so that it goes out with the trash. 

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If you want to get started on designing for a circular future, you can download our FREE Post Disposable Activation Kit, a set of free tools that we designed to help you activate your leadership and make lifestyle shifts for a post disposable future, read my book on circular systems design, listen to this great podcast from the 99% Invisible, or come to an in-person program at the UnSchool to activate your agency and learn the skills of creative changemaking.

The rise of sustainable living

By Leyla Acaroglu

Earlier this year, I was invited to attend the Fourth UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya. Politicians, innovators, and activists gathered to discuss the future of global sustainable production and consumption, looking at what the next stages are for creating systems of sustainability and circularity and how to unlock the consumption paradox.  

Despite the meeting not obtaining the desired resolutions to help bring about the significant global restructuring needed for a healthy and sustainable planet, the uplifting thing was that finally, after many years, the discussions centered on the roles of design and consumption for how to achieve global social and environmental sustainability. I, like everyone else, have my moments of disillusion, where the hope gets drained out of you by the fatigue of complaints, problems, and inaction. So allow me to focus on the flip side to that: the changes I see rising from the slightly nerdy world of sustainable production and consumption.

Not too long ago, terms like “zero waste” were boring policy directives thrown around by government departments with long-term strategies like “zero waste by 2020”. But in the last few years, ‘going zero waste’ and sustainable living in general have taken on an entirely cooler persona as a lifestyle trend of young, hip Instagrammers and savvy YouTubers are all helping to make this a movement and trend that now anyone can get involved in.

Yes, there are like any movements critiques of the gender politics and the validity of the claims of those who are promoting this lifestyle trend. Years ago, there was a claim that there was a growing trend called LOHAS: Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability, and that people would actually start to make economic decisions based on the issues that matter to them. So for me, the Zero Wasters are the living incarnation of this marketing prophecy. And even more so, it demonstrates that the actions of a small group of people can have big impacts on the economy.

A ZERO WASTE LIFESTYLE

A zero waste lifestyler is someone who actively reduces their waste consumption by designing their life to combat acquiring things that are wasteful or will end up as trash, especially avoiding all disposable and non-recyclable products and packaging. Someone embracing a zero waste life usually plans meals in advance to avoid convenience packaging, and ensures they always have a reusable water bottle, coffee cup, straw, and bags on hand to actively refuse disposable items. This names just a few and varied everyday actions these lifestylers take to avoid contributing to the global waste pandemic.

These types of actions aren’t really new; they were well-practiced as normal before the lifestyle of hyper-convenience encouraged runaway disposability, beginning in the 1960s. So, the challenge hasn’t been finding alternatives as much as it has been rebelling against the current status quo.

Many of the heroes of the zero waste lifestyle movement share incredible stories of only making one small jar of actual ‘trash’ a year, often shared on social media through active lifestyle design and adopting simple everyday changes. Composting organic waste from their homes, proactively purchasing reusable products, or even making essentials like toothpaste at home are all part of their day-to-day practices.

While there are aspirational leaders in the movement who are very much tied to the brand of zero waste, the key takeaway is that a person who actively seeks to reduce consumption impacts through conscious micro-actions across several different areas of their lives is a positive thing that should be encouraged. Not just because it helps bring about a new normal around reusability in society, but because it helps change the economy. When many micro-actions are being replicated, it has impacts on the goods and services that end up being made available to all of us.

This can all be seen in the rise of products and services to meet the needs of the zero waste community. Putting aside the questionable environmental credentials from a life cycle perspective of many of the products, and just looking at the shifts in the economy, we can see change — positive change toward a new type of normal, whereby people are activating their agency to help solve the global waste crises.

There are now dedicated zero waste stores in many major cities around the globe (not just in obvious hipster strongholds like New York!). Modern plant-based restaurants, and even entire shopping centers that have sprung up to accommodate this growing trend of plastic-free, package-free, and zero waste consumers who are interested in sustainable consumption options.

As a result of many different interventions, companies have also started to embrace the global trend toward sustainability. We are seeing leaders emerge in the circular economy in some sectors, such as apparel, consumer goods, and furniture. The Loop circular delivery service was just launched this year, and the biggest IPO in two decades was Beyond Meat. Ikea recently announced that they would be 100% circular by 2030, and Lego is working on a plastic-free brick. These examples show a growing demand and substantial shift towards the normalization of products and services that go beyond recycling and start to move us into position where further positive disruptions can occur.

I know, there is still a shit ton of work to do to solve the complex social and environmental problems that occur as a result of the global supply chain marketed to quickly meet every immediate desire of the human needs. Walk down the aisles in any supermarket around the world, and it's obvious that the vast majority of product providers are yet to catch on to this massive cultural shift underway, where consumers are conscious of their impacts and want to avoid investing in wasteful plastic-laden unsustainable products and services. But, the shifts we are seeing are encouraging and should be highlighted.

THE REAL ISSUE IS DISPOSABILITY: THE ROOT OF ALL WASTE

Waste is the dark side of consumption, and despite two solid decades of zero waste policies, and many different approaches from cleaner production to eco-design and sustainable consumption, and now the circular economy, we are still seeing a global increase in waste generation. And not just in plastics clogging the oceans, but in high-tech trash, textile, and food waste.

The issues with waste is that no matter how much recycling or waste management is put in place, more waste is generated than can be dealt with. Many emerging economies have limited or minimal waste management systems, and many big Western countries have absconded their responsibility to manage their own waste efficiently, just exporting it to an emerging economy. Like the case of the Canadian trash that the Philippians refused to take on, or as evidenced by the collapse of the recycling industry after China refused to take the world’s plastic trash any longer.

There continues to be a significant trend in converting reusable products to disposable ones, combined with the painful reality of planned obsolescence in high-value goods, so many aspects of our daily lives are now marked by single or low-value use products. Thus, going zero waste is one defiant act that anyone can do to take a stand against this. The reality is that what we spend our money on impacts the economy. Just like investing in renewable energy increases the value of that industry, the same is said for every product or service. We get more of what we invest in.

And let’s not forget that all of this comes down to design. The World Bank estimates that at the current rate of increase, we will see 70% increase in waste generation by 2050. This is all by design. Waste, whether it be in trash or recycling, is a design flaw, so even with the rise of waste rejection, we have a significant trend to contend with. Products are designed to break, and systems are designed to increase disposability as they cut costs and respond to customer concerns of health and safety. A significant part of the entire waste/pollution/unsustainability problem is that we have designed a system that incentivizes waste, and that is why we need to design for a post disposable future.

Design is also an incredibly powerful part of the solution. We can design for a future that meets our needs in sustainable and regenerative ways, and it's no wonder that the waste backlash is coming at a time when people are more able to design their own lives and share these behavioral and cultural shifts online to audiences of others willing to buck the status quo. This new generation of active consumers, be it zero wasters or minimalists, they are exerting their personal interests on the economy. This is helping to challenge the dominant culture of hyper-consumption and instead showing ways of living a more intentional and purposeful life.

MAKE CHANGES EVEN THOUGH IT TAKES TIME AND EVEN IF YOU FAIL

I have spent years researching ways of effecting change, and the one thing I know to be true is that change is constant, but it also takes time. Many people are not willing to even try something new because they think that it won’t serve them well, but when they do actually enact a habit disruption and discover that there was not a negative outcome, they often then adopt the new change and share it with others. Change is socially contagious, in both directions on the positive/negative scale.

Change is often hard to see whilst you are in the middle of it, and it is even harder when it’s a resistance to the status quo. The global changes toward a sustainable, regenerative, and circular economy require multiple different actors shifting their behaviors and patterns in diverse ways. In the case of zero waste living, it's all about agency and having ownership of your own impact. More so, it is contagious, as the power of social influence kicks in and people see the positive outcomes that making these types of changes can have.

When enough people validate the new actions, it’s a free pathway to the new outcome! To be sure, there are many challenges ahead of us when it comes to sustainability, and major corporations are still far behind in the trend of adopting the significance of the changes needed to adapt to a circular economy. But the progress is real and transformative. The question is not if, but when will we see the tipping point of change where we, as a collective species, start to design goods and services to be a positive influence on the planet?

It's never too late to start swapping unsustainable daily decisions to more considered ones, and in fact, there are five simple actions we can all can start anytime.

Five everyday actions to start RIGHT now

1. Swap out some meat for plant-based proteins

2. Ditch everyday disposables such as cups, plates, bags, and take-out containers

3. Invest in the things you want to see in the world by buying repairable and long-lasting stuff (and make sure to repair it when it needs to be fixed!)

4. Opt for low-carbon mobility options like biking, mass transit, or ride-sharing

5. Move money from high-impact industries to renewables through swapping energy providers, banks, and investment portfolios

Can We Eat our Way to a More Sustainable Planet?

By The UnSchool Team

We can all agree that there are fundamental failures in the global food system, with over a third of all food produced being wasted and millions of people being affected by food deserts. What systems changes could be introduced to create solutions in different ways?

From extreme hunger, under-nourishment, and food waste through to how we grow, process, transport, and consume food, there are plenty of opportunities for improvement throughout the many sub-systems of the global food system. In this UnSchool Journal article, we’ll take a detailed look at the EAT-Lancet's recent report that explored whether we could feed a healthy diet for a future population of 10 billion people, while remaining within planetary boundaries. We’ll also take a high-level look into the burning question about how you can swap up your food choices to contribute more equitable, sustainable food systems change around the world.

What is the EAT-Lancet Commission — and why does this report matter?

The EAT-Lancet report is the first time, we have had scientific targets for both healthy human diets and sustainable food production, based on a rigorous, comprehensive review of the most recent scientific literature. The team behind this report is the EAT-Lancet Commission, which is a part of EAT, “a non-profit startup dedicated to transforming our global food system through sound science, impatient disruption, and novel partnerships.”

The EAT-Lancet Commission is a team of 37 multi-disciplinary scientists from 16 countries who set out to tackle the systems issues of hunger, obesity, and environmental degradation by discovering how people should eat to solve all of these issues — keeping in mind that we are projected to rise to 9.8 billion humans on Earth by 2050. The result of their efforts shares an important micro-action that we can adopt as individuals to work toward a better collective whole via systems change: the “planetary health diet.”

How does the “planetary health diet” work?

Visualize a plate that is halfway filled with fruits and vegetables. Now, on the other half, imagine whole grains, plant proteins like lentils and beans, and unsaturated plant oils. Note that while being plant-based, it’s also a flexible plan, and it does allow for modest amounts of meat and dairy (as well as a little added sugar) — although being vegan and vegetarian are both options for healthy individuals and a healthy planet.

The most important focus for planetary health lies in the reduction of red meat consumption, due to the major environmental impacts associated with livestock farming. As reported by WEF: “According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, emissions from global livestock account for 14.5% of anthropogenic (from human activity) greenhouse gases, while the World Bank chart above shows that, in 2014, 70% of freshwater withdrawal was used for agriculture - projected to rise by a further 15% by 2050.” Of course, minimizing red meat consumption is also optimal for human health, given that eating high amounts of red meat is associated with higher risk for type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke and certain cancers.

While loads of research was conducted in order to arrive at these new guidelines, the gist of the planetary health diet as a means to create food systems change remains pretty simplistic: increase consumption of nutritious plant-based foods (fruits, veg, nuts, legumes, and whole grains), and decrease consumption of red meat, sugar, and refined grains.

This doesn’t seem too radical to us, as we have already adopted a vegetable centric food philosophy at all UnSchool events! Our recent collaboration with the UNEP shows the five areas of everyday action you can take to reduce your footprint and contribute to a more sustainable life.

10 everyday actions you can take to reduce your food footprint

1. Diversify your diet to include more plant-based products, and cook more at home

2. Increase your intake of plant-based foods and explore the joys of non animal protein rich options like beans, chickpeas, lentils and peas (they are delicious!)

3. Embrace a flexitarian, reducetarian, vegetarian, or vegan diet

4. Shop for local seasonal food that is produced sustainably, such as your local farmers’ market or package-free store

5. Buy sustainably produced foods. They may cost a bit more, but if you invest in quality over quantity, you are offering a better impact to your health and the planet

6. Buy only what you can finish, save, or cook in bulk to freeze, in order to avoid food waste and avoid adding methane into the atmosphere

7. Avoid excessive packaging by buying fresh and taking your own reusable packaging and bags to stores. Re-use any packaging as long as possible if you are not able to avoid it in certain cases

8. Ask for healthy and and sustainable food options from your the people you buy food and other products from

9. Grow some food yourself by starting or joining an urban garden, community garden, school garden, or kitchen garden

10. Support organizations, policies, and programs that promote sustainable food systems - speak up about them, ask questions, and get involved

To read the full report Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems (Walter Willett et al.), visit here. To discover how to reframe sustainability and think critically about everyday impacts, check out this course at UnSchool Online.

What is Greenwashing, and How to Spot It

By Leyla Acaroglu

In our hyper-consumption based societies, it’s always smart to raise a skeptical eyebrow when you hear organizations make claims of how they’re “doing their part” in the quest to “save the Earth”, (although at the UnSchool we truly believe that no one can “save” the Earth, but we can all change it!). But when companies invest more time and money on marketing their products or brand as “green” rather than actually doing the hard work to ensure that it is sustainable — this is called greenwashing.

Cambridge Dictionary says  greenwashing is designed “to make people believe that your company is doing more to protect the environment than it really is.”

As an analogy, greenwashing is to corporations as tree hugging is to individuals who say they care about the environment, it's a symbolic reference that has little actual outcomes.  And more so just confuses the issue attempting to be resolved.

Whilst some greenwashing is unintentional and results from a lack of knowledge about what sustainability truly is, it is often intentionally carried out through a wide range of marketing and PR efforts. But the common denominator among all greenwashing is that it is not only misleading, but it’s also really not helping to further sustainable design or circular economy initiatives. Thus, environmental problems stay the same or more likely, get even worse, as greenwashing often sucks up airtime and misdirects well-intentioned consumers down the wrong path.

One such classic greenwashing case is that of the car giant Volkswagen, who has admitted to cheating emissions tests by fitting various vehicles with a “defeat” device — a proprietary software that could detect when it was undergoing an emissions testing, altering the performance to reduce the emissions level, all while touting the low-emissions features of its vehicles through marketing campaigns. In truth, however, these engines were emitting up to 40x the allowed limit for nitrogen oxide pollutants.

There are countless other case studies across all industries that show how NOT to do sustainability by discovering more examples of greenwashing — like the meat mega-giant Tyson, who got busted for false claims about antibiotic-free chickens. Or the fossil fuel giant BP (who changed their name to Beyond Petroleum and put solar panels on their gas stations) and then  got called out for their green misdirection,  and of course Coke, who has been accused of greenwashing through ‘natural’ sugar claims that it started marketing as a way to attract more health-conscious consumers.

Years ago the design agency Futerra made a really cool resource called the Sins of Greenwashing, which classifies the many ways that companies participate in greenwashing, from outright lying through to making claims with no scientific proof. This is one of the reasons that life cycle thinking is such an important tool to know how to access and use when making sustainable design choices, because many people who get caught greenwashing are often not intentionally doing it, but more so are ill-informed of the impacts of different materials. They thus end up accidentally making unsubstantiated claims about environmental preferences, or worse still making assumptions about what is green or not based on environmental folklore or simple google searching!  

Greenwashing AND single-use plastics

One of the most pervasive examples of greenwashing is in the world of single-use plastic. Did you know that half of the worlds disposable plastic has been produced in the last 15 years! And 91% of plastic produced globally is NOT recycled. You have probably already heard of the global plastic-in-the-ocean-disaster we are seeing, with stats that say there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050 and the horrific images of once pristine beaches being overwhelmed by plastic debris. It's no wonder the world is up in arms about this tragic by-product of our disposable lifestyles.

This alarming issue drove us to create our free Post-Disposable Activation Kit, and it’s why we talk so much about the dangerous idea that recycling will solve all the problems, when in fact the main issue is that we have normalized disposability to the point where everything is valueless. And not only is recycling a bit of environmental folklore, but so are many of the bioplastics being marketed as sustainable design solutions.

Bioplastics are plastics made from bio based polymers that are engineered to perform like normal petrochemical plastics. In nearly every case, they need a certain set of conditions to break down in (oxygen and sunlight that aren’t present in a landfill or the ocean, for example). Further to the end of life management issues, they also require a certain amount of petrochemicals in their production phase so often have a similar amount of ‘plastic products’ embedded within them.  Additionally, since plastic bags take a lot of energy and other resources to manufacture in the first place, a “friendlier” plastic is not helpful at all when using life-cycle thinking. The FTC began cracking down on the misleading claims of bioplastic manufacturers in 2013 and handed out more warnings to marketers in 2014.

This was the case in Australia years ago when a plastic bag company swapped to ‘biodegradable’ plastic, which technically didn't fully degrade, but instead just breaks down into smaller parts unless it's processed in a digester specifically designed to create the conditions for biodegradation. What is actually needed is a compostable bag, which is a different thing entirely. The bag made big eco claims, and the consumer affairs watchdog fined them and required them to stop selling the product as it was completely false. In fact, Australia has this entire guide on how to avoid greenwashing!

As consumers, we have the power to see through the greenwashing and calling bullshit where it's due, rather then falling into the safe belief that there are simple solutions to complex problems. We can continue to pressure corporations to create truly viable, post-disposable, sustainable and circular design solutions by changing our own habits and behaviours to support the more sustainable options. We believe that all of these problems are solvable with good design, a systems mindset, and services that reconfigure how we meet our human needs without damaging Earth in the process. If you want to participate in the global post-disposable redesign challenge, check out this set of design briefs that we created.

Bust more Eco-Myths

Greenwashing is all about misdirection, showing one thing that distracts you from what is really going on. The main issue we see is that greenwashing takes up valuable space in the fight against significant environmental issues like climate change, plastic ocean pollutions, air pollution and global species extinctions. The saddest thing is that many companies do it by accident, as they don't have the expertise to know what is truly environmentally beneficial, and what is not.

We are approaching a critical time in which more organizations and individuals are adopting sustainable design and zero waste living practices, and entire communities are banning disposable plastics, It’s important to be able to quickly identify instances of greenwashing, and replace them with truly sustainable practices both as a consumer and as an employee (which the UnSchool sustainability course covers in more detail).

This is a time of abundant opportunities.

We all can be change agents in considering and designing sustainable outcomes in the world around us that affect systemic wellbeing — socially, economically, and environmentally. When we frame sustainability as a practice that helps us create a future that we’re excited about living in, we generate optimism about solving complex problems (which is what’s required to truly tackle these issues!).

Pair that with creative thinking, knowledge of systems and life cycle thinking, and a foundation built on what sustainable design in practice really looks like, and we’ll have tangible outcomes that are positively disrupting the status quo and affecting change.

To level up your capacity to make more effective change-making decisions for a sustainable and regenerative planet, consider starting our UnMasters track to get certified by the UnSchool as a professional creative change-maker.